[Meta] Answerhub categories, accept rates, etc

Just some feedback on the system you’ve got going here. Apologies for the wall of text, but I figure it’s best to discuss these things before the system gathers too much momentum.

Answerhub/Stack Overflow type systems work well, but the single stream of questions you have here, as well as substantial amounts of duplication between questions, introduce a certain degree of noise when trying to get some input on a technical problem at present. At the moment it is all too trivial for a technical question which isn’t looked at within 5 minutes of being posted to be pushed down off the first or even second page, meaning that without ‘bumps’ those questions tend to be completely lost without any chance of receiving answers. This is in no small part due to the large number of requests for assistance with troubleshooting installation/first run issues, and the number of repetitive questions wanting clarification regarding the new licensing arrangements.

StackOverflow and so on work well because they try to de-duplicate questions as quickly as possible, and they narrow the focus in terms of which questions are accepted on which site (Stack Overflow vs Super User is a good example of this).

  • I guess splitting the hub up so that technical questions (ie how do I achieve this in the engine/what’s the best way to code this) are seperate from more general tech support ones (ie Crash on first run, installer doesn’t work, etc) isn’t so feasible at this point, so could I at least suggest that new categories be created for Troubleshooting/Installation issues, and for Licensing questions? Not only for the purposes of having my, and other people’s, questions stand a chance to be noticed before being buried, but as somebody who enjoys helping out with the technical and programming side of things it would better enable me to filter out the licensing and installation issues I’d rather leave to Epic to answer authoritatively, and focus on answering implementation questions without having to browse 5 other categories individually to do so.
  • In addition to this, might I suggest that if people post questions in categories that have common answers, like a lot of the licensing/pricing type queries, that you get them to skim past/search the FAQ before posting? This would also help to reduce the unnecessary number of posts.
  • It would help to institute moderators, whether Epic employees or not, who are able to ‘prune’ duplicated questions that do make it through this.

Something else that is essential to the self-moderation, feedback/karma system being used here on Answerhub, is making sure people accept answers that have solved their issues. If karma and accept rates are designed to incentivise participation, but more importantly with accept rates functioning as a measure of reliability and authority on the subject at hand, its critical that people actually acknowledge answers that have worked, so that the reputation system can function correctly. At the moment I don’t think most of this initial influx of users are even aware of how that system works. I’m far less concerned about achievements or the point-scoring exercise of karma, for myself, but I’ve given a number of answers that have worked for people so far and my accept rate is sitting around 16% despite comments indicating more like half of those answers solved the issue. It sort of feels crass for me to then respond with nagging the user to accept my answer. :confused:

  • Perhaps you could have a one-time-display page similar to Tour - Stack Overflow when a user first accesses Answerhub, so people are aware of how the system is supposed to function?

Great feedback! Would you mind dropping me an email at daniel.vogel@epicgames.com so I can put you in contact with folks working on this? I’d love to pick your brain more about all this :slight_smile:

The one-time display page is a great idea. We’ve been looking at ways to have people follow the rules, or a least be aware of them, but similar to your problem the rules post was pushed into oblivion. I’ll keep track of this and enter it as a feature request for a future update. Thanks for the feedback!

I agree with everything that is being said here. I would also add:

– Tag page, where tags are displayed, along with tag description. Page should be able to filter for tags that are most popular, lest popular, alphabetically etc.

– Option to subscribe for certain tags, where you will get notification if someone posted question with particular tag. I would love to really help people, but in current unorganized flood is really hard to find question I can safely answer, or question is already answered, Or I see question, refresh page, and it down the line and I just can’t find it.

– We need community moderation. With flood of users, you guys just won’t be able to deal with all traffic. I’m sure you will try, but we all have business here for Q&A site being clean and useful, for general knowledge sharing.

–Categories need to be clearly exposed. Preferable as tabs on top of page. When posting question, selecting proper category should also better expose. I personally would move the category selection to bottom, just above save button, and make it ListBox instead of DropDownBox. The letter look nicer, but it’s easy to miss and pick wrong category. More over by default category selection should be empty, and it should not be possible to post without selecting category. It also should be possible to change category when editing post. So I can for example correct my self if I choose wrong one.

–automatic email remained to accept answer for question. If the question have not accepted answer for X amount of time there should email send to person who asked question, to which will remaind of accepting answer. It should be possible to disable this on per question basis (but not globally!).

– it would be nice to strictly separate forums and Q&A site. Forums is for more general discussion, about whatever. Q&A site, should be only about asking questions that can be strictly answered, without any particular discussion. That is not to say, you can discuss in Q&A site. You can do so, but only using comment to question.

– this would be controversial, but I would personally made Q&A site only for subscribers, with only one section accessible for everyone. Everyone can read everything, but only subscribers can ask and answer question in most categories. non-subscribers could do it only in one category. This would really help controlling spam, repeating the same question over and over again, as well as improve general quality.

– Add title tags. When question is unanswered it could have appened [Unanswered] to the title automatically. If answer is checked it would have [Answered] appended instead. Color marking questions is also good idea.

–oh please increase character limit for comments :wink:

I think you can already subscribe to tags via the “Manually added topics” field of the “Expertise Settings” of your profile?

Oh true. Hard to find it. On StackOverflow you can just browse tags, click on interesting one and subscribe to it.

Hover over tag and wait second for pop up.

Nothing happened in more than a year now. I suggest uncheck the “Great feedback!” answer from @daniel-vogel and continue to find an answser as this is really big issue here.

I just found a question duplicate four times…

I think that Epic moderator should remove duplicated question rather than copy’n’paste the answer…

Move to StackOverflow

Why can’t we simply move to Unreal Enigne 4 at StackOverflow?

I know that you guys at Epic have made a big investment into this platform, but it’s not working. Now since it’s not working for a couple of years - it’s becoming a bigger investment (with a need to supoprt that infrastructure) with every month. Don’t lie to yourself that you’ll fix it some day.

Many companies are using SO as their official support channel, just because community can help them dealing with this support.

SO has many benefits:

  • extremely mature tools for keeping quality in given section
  • best organization out there
  • great SEO
  • big user base
  • robust infrastructure, low response times